Hegel's Realm of Shadows: Logic as Metaphysics in “The Science of Logic”

by Robert B. Pippin

Hegel frequently claimed that the heart of his entire system was a book widely regarded as among the most difficult in the history of philosophy, The Science of Logic . This is the book that presents his metaphysics, an enterprise that he insists can only be properly understood as a “logic,” or a “science of pure thinking.” Since he also wrote that the proper object of any such logic is pure thinking itself, it has always been unclear in just what sense such a science could be a “metaphysics.”

Robert B. Pippin offers here a bold, original interpretation of Hegel’s claim that only now, after Kant’s critical breakthrough in philosophy, can we understand how logic can be a metaphysics. Pippin addresses Hegel’s deep, constant reliance on Aristotle’s conception of metaphysics, the difference between Hegel’s project and modern rationalist metaphysics, and the links between the “logic as metaphysics” claim and modern developments in the philosophy of logic. Pippin goes on to explore many other facets of Hegel’s thought, including the significance for a philosophical logic of the self-conscious character of thought, the dynamism of reason in Kant and Hegel, life as a logical category, and what Hegel might mean by the unity of the idea of the true and the idea of the good in the “Absolute Idea.” The culmination of Pippin’s work on Hegel and German idealism, this is a book that no Hegel scholar or historian of philosophy will want to miss.

Genres: Philosophy, Metaphysics, Logic

352 pages, Hardcover

Published November 16, 2018

About the author

Robert B. Pippin is the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought, the Department of Philosophy, and the College at the University of Chicago. He is the author of several books and articles on German idealism and later German philosophy, including Kant's Theory of Form; Hegel's Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness; Modernism as a Philosophical Problem; and Idealism as Modernism: Hegelian Variations. In addition he has published on issues in political philosophy, theories of self-consciousness, the nature of conceptual change, and the problem of freedom. He also wrote a book about literature and philosophy: Henry James and Modern Moral Life. A collection of his essays in German, Die Verwirklichung der Freiheit, appeared in 2005, as did The Persistence of Subjectivity: On the Kantian Aftermath, and his book on Nietzsche, Nietzsche, moraliste français: La conception nietzschéenne d'une psychologie philosophique, appeared in 2006. Fatalism in American Film Noir: Some Cinematic Philosophy appeared in 2012. He was twice an Alexander von Humboldt fellow, is a winner of the Mellon Distinguished Achievement Award in the Humanities, and was recently a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a member of the American Philosophical Society. He is also a member of the German National Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Reviews

[Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are two types of books on Hegel: (1) those that attempt to reconstruct his arguments in detail; (2) those that try to guide you in your reading of Hegel. Due to the sheer amount of text necessary to adequately do (1), I much prefer (2) as a Hegel secondary, and Pippin does perhaps the best job of it. A fantastic guide to reading not just the Science of Logic, but Hegel generally. An absolute must-read.

[Jooseppi Räikkönen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pippin is phenomenal. Stylistically masterful, logically austere, nigh excessively erudite and faithful to the material. I can't believe someone can write on Hegel with this level of clarity, though the motivating energy I've recently started finding in the source material itself. This is the stuff.

[Tapji Garba · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lifetime achievement. Wasn't expecting to like the book as much as I did, but I think this is Pippin at his finest.

[Shae Himmel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great overview of the technical concepts driving Hegel's philosophy: Being, Essence, Concept, reflection, negation, Absolute, etc. Pippin charitably recounts what it means for thinking itself to be the "truth" of being. Hereby, on Pippin's account, Hegel takes himself to overcome Kant's gap between noumenon and phenomenon by liquidating the former - when all that can be thought is what we do in fact think, the noumenon as an "otherwise" from that thought loses all content. This renders logic (the science of thinking) identical to metaphysics (the science of being), so that account-giving is fully self-disclosed, autonomous, and free. In romantic terms, this is nothing short of human self-liberation through careful, painstaking reflection. In historical terms, this is a completion of the injunction of the Delphic Oracle - "know thyself." For Hegel, this means - know what it means to know.

[E H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pippin was always an outlier in his reading of Hegel. Coming from an analytic background you’d assume he’d handle it with as much care as people like Brandom or Mcdowell, but in fact Pippin is closer to someone like Houlgate rather than the analytic bunch with his interpretation.
As an introduction to the logic there is not be a single complaint to be had, he has read and can relay the concepts of the logic in a way which is easily accessible even to those who don’t have much of a background in philosophy.
The thing I take issue with (and claim him to be more similar to Houlgate) is how he still reads Hegel as being a strong Kantian, in a way this reading can be useful to make examples of what Hegel is doing in some regards, but is still oversimplistic. Hegel is not really operating with categories a la Kant, nor is he really doing the same things Kant was doing metaphysically.

Still this is an Important read to anyone who is getting into Hegel and should be regarded highly.

[Joey Z · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Ahhhhhh—Help me, I’m trapped in the Hegelian Realm of Shadows™️, and I’m gooning the penumbra!!!”

(cf. Hegel’s Science of Logic: 12.173, 12.233, 12.237, and 12.253)

[Oscar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really very good. Well worth the re-read.